--- Luke -Jr luke@dashjr.org wrote:
On Thursday 13 March 2008, Leo Mauler wrote:
*Default* KDE has:
- A "Start" menu in the lower left corner,
which is very similar to Windows.
Hm, I wonder why. Obviously, the left is logical for left-to-right languages. Which means that even if we assume there are no other reasons for top/bottom, the choice is between being similar to another common OS and use the bottom, or using the top just to be not Windows. What reasons are there to use the top over the bottom?
*Default* GNOME has:
- A "Start" menu in the upper left corner,
completely unlike Windows.
- A user application/applet bar at both the
top and bottom of the screen, again completely unlike Windows.
Why? Just to be "completely unlike Windows"?
One thing I particularly enjoy about using both top and bottom is the division between the "menu and applets" bar, and the "desktops and running applications" bar. Instead of one bottom taskbar (in Windows and KDE) which has to hold everything, a top and bottom bar means more of what I'm doing is visible at any one time, and no application names are being abbreviated or erased in their buttons. I also get to see day of the week, date, and seconds in addition to the time, without having to increase the width of a single taskbar or further shrink everything else on a single taskbar.
I don't know if KDE does what I call "application instance stacking", where three instances of, say, Notepad, are stacked in a single button in the "running applications" section of the bottom bar in Windows. If KDE does do that behavior then I have another reason to dislike KDE, though I'm afraid its a bit of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for KDE, because the alternative to "application stacking" is to shorten the application button size until the text is unreadable.
Obviously I could do more to make my workspace more efficient by really customizing my window manager, but as I haven't had a lot of free time lately, having a top and bottom bar in default Ubuntu Linux has made me rather enjoy using Linux (and made Windows in many ways downright painful). Multiple desktops might alleviate the "crammed tight bottom bar"situation in KDE, but it just doesn't seem as efficient as the way GNOME does it.
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